


To crave the rose

by kaberett



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, zuko is rubbish at crafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaberett/pseuds/kaberett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The palace grounds are meticulously laid out, and the rose gardens especially are noted for their exquisite formal design and the creativity and dedication evident in the unique cultivars. They are Mai's favourite haunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To crave the rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Noldo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noldo/gifts).



> Written as an extremely belated birthday present. The Internet tells me that birthday cake would be unlikely to happen until the age of 60. I couldn't resist the combination of Zuko being a bit rubbish at crafts, and those two after a lifetime together. In the headcanon I'm rapidly developing, the rose garden was Zuko's official wedding present to his bride. (She rolled her eyes at him, of course.)

The palace grounds are meticulously laid out, and the rose gardens especially are noted for their exquisite formal design and the creativity and dedication evident in the unique cultivars.

They are Mai's favourite haunt.

She drifts gently past the elegant vistas and the cherry trees and the ornamental lake. The slightest smile of contentment traces its way across her face (makes its incremental contribution to the faint spiderweb of lines, water droplets on stone) as she passes through the gates to the banks of blowsy flowers.

They are not all black, nor even deep crimson. Nor are they confined to the palette of oranges and scarlets of the nation's emblems. No: Mai's rose garden holds more variety than that. The pale yellows of teas are there; the brilliant white, blue-tinged, of Katara's homeland; peach and lavender and pink-tipped-white of frosty winter dawns.

Mai loves them all.

She has never grown demonstrative. She is quiet, still, and she betrays her love with her presence rather than her words. So she is rarely far from Zuko, though these days she is less prone to propping herself, arms folded, in the nearest doorway, liminal in her commitment and watchful in her guard; and so she is found, often, among the flowers. (It is noted by contemporary historians and analysts that it is rare indeed for a royal portrait not to feature roses, in one form or another; it is rumoured that Mai trains amidst the flowers and the thorns.)

Mai has never grown demonstrative: so when she rounds a thicket and enters a scene of destruction, she narrows her eyes, shifts her balance, and has the hapless gardener pinned expertly to a tree within three seconds.

Mai is not impressed when the gardener in question faints. She turns her back on the girl and surveys her surroundings, impassive, tapping a knife fluidly against her thigh.

She stills even that motion when she hears a stifled gasp. "Your Ladyship," she hears whispered behind her.

With her free hand, Mai lifts a flower head, its petals stripped, above her shoulder. "You will tell me what happened here," she says.

"Your Ladyship," comes the faltering reply, "his Lordship--"

" _Zuko_?" hisses Mai, and stalks off toward the palace. She thrusts the stripped rose into the startled embrace of a guard as she sweeps up the stairs (the guard, in her turn, stares after her Fire Lady for thirty seconds; spends another forty-five gazing blankly at the stem in her hands - then startles and takes off running.

She pulls up short at the screens between their apartments and their courtyard. Zuko is bent muttering over a stove, his back to the door and the turtle pond, his sleeves rolled up and his hands dusty with flour. He is concentrating intently on the fire; next to him is a delicate glass bowl of rose petals.

"What," she says, "do you think you were doing to my garden?" Her voice is quiet beneath the crackle of the flames and the whisper of the stream, and no less cutting for it.

Zuko spins, fire swirling around him in the time it takes for him to process the information that his assailant is his wife.

(He is embarrassed, she notes, and flustered. Good. He wipes his forehead with his wrist, and smears it black and white, soot and flour.)

"Mai," he says.

"Not your life story," she replies, biting cold.

"... I was trying to make you a fruit tart with rose petals," he says. "But apparently I'm not very good at it." There is a beat of silence. "Happy birthday?"

Mai is speechless. And she is thawing: _even after all these years_ , she thinks, and something confused - it yearns to be poetry - about _the fire of his love_.

"So it would seem," she whispers, eventually, and crosses the courtyard to his.


End file.
